Americas History Eighth Edition America: A Concise History Sixth Edition CHAPTER 17 Industrial America: Corporations and Conflicts, 18771911 Copyright 2014 by Bedford/St. Martins James A. Henretta Eric Hinderaker Rebecca Edwards Robert O. Self I. The Rise of Big Business A. Innovators in Enterprise 1. Production and Sales -Corporation use vertical integration and predatory pricing 2. Standard Oil and the Rise of the Trusts -John D Rockafeller creates leading refiner. Used vertical integration to control production + sales; allied with rail road executives. Also used horizontal integration. Trust: new legal form that organized a small group of associates the board of trustees to hold stock from a group of combined firms, managing them as a single entity. I. The Rise of Big Business A. Innovators in Enterprise (cont.) 3. Assessing the Industrialists -Swift, Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc. controversial. Robber Barons or Industrial Statesmen? Economic prosperity or hardship often dictates. 4. A National Consumer Culture - John Wanamaker opened first department store in Philadelphia. at fairs and expositions, stores connect with rural customers; catalogs popular; by 1900, magazine ads used artwork to attract consumers interest. 1903, the Ladies Home Journal had more than one million subscribers I. The Rise of Big Business B. The Corporate Workplace 1. Managers and Salesmen -White collar professionals; during 1850s 1880s, emergence of managers on railway lines. middle managers supervised departments. 1870s, the drummer (traveling salesmen) emerged. Manager Quotas. 2. Women in the Corporate Office -Turn of the century, 77 percent of stenographers and typists were women. Daycare allowed women to give up piecework jobs and work as saleswomen. I. The Rise of Big Business C. On the Shop Floor 1. Health Hazards and Pollution -Late-nineteenth-century industrial work was dangerous and unregulated. Factories damaged environments through air and water pollution. 2. Unskilled Labor and Discrimination -Increasingly, women and children were part of the unskilled labor force; by 1900, one in five children under age 16 worked outside of the home. corporations and industrial manufacturers widely discriminated against blacks. Most industries hired new immigrant labor. II. Immigrants, East and West A. Newcomers from Europe 1. West -Potato famine in Crowded ships with many unskilled workers. Sojourners planned to work, save, and return to Europe. 1/3 late 19 th /early 20 th century immigrants return home. 2. East -Italians, Greeks, Eastern European Jews were among the most numerous arrivals. from 1880 1920, more than 3 million poverty-stricken Jews came from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe for work and to escape religious persecution. II. Immigrants, East and West B. Asian Americans and Exclusion 1. Immigrants -First Chinese came to U.S. in 1840s to participate in Gold Rush. discrimination against Asian immigrants intensified during economic depression of 1870s. Calls for deportation. 2. Chinese excluded -Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) barred workers from entering country; was not repealed until 1943; Korean and Japanese immigrants began arriving at the turn of the century; 1906 ruling stated that these new immigrants were not eligible for citizenship; Chinese were nations first illegal immigrants. III. Labor Gets Organized A. The Emergence of a Labor Movement 1. Trade unions -Workers organizations that sought to negotiate directly with employers for the benefit of the workers. 2. Agrarians -Farmers advocates; argued against high tariffs because of their negative impact on rural families; farmers criticized the railroads, large corporations, and eastern banks. National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry (1867) III. Labor Gets Organized A. The Emergence of a Labor Movement 3. Greenback-Labor Party -During 1870s depression, the Greenback-Labor Party was forged by Grangers, labor advocates, and local workingmens parties; protested convict labor and the end of Reconstruction; advocated the protection of the individual mans vote; wanted an eight-hour workday and an increase of the amount of money in circulation to stimulate the economy; subscribed to the ideal of producerism: critical of middle management and advanced those who labored with their hands; III. Labor Gets Organized B. The Knights of Labor (1869) 1. A cooperative commonwealth -Participated in Greenback Party movement; wanted factories run by employees; practiced open membership; advocated temperance; included skilled craftsmen, domestic workers, and textile workers; hired Leonora Barry as a full-time organizer of working women. III. Labor Gets Organized B. The Knights of Labor (1869) 2. Haymarket Square incident -Knights were successful with grassroots, spontaneous strikes. strike at Haymarket Square became violent and damaged the public image of the labor movement; employers broke strikes with mass arrests, tied up the Knights in expensive court proceedings, and forced workers to sign contracts pledging not to join labor organizations III. Labor Gets Organized C. Farmers and Workers: The Cooperative Alliance 1. Farmers Alliance -Advocated cooperative stores and exchanges to remove middlemen from sales; Texas Farmers Alliance proposed federal price-support system for farm products. cooperated with the Knights of Labor 2. Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) -Investigated interstate shipping, forcing railroads to make their rates public, and suing over unreasonable rates. III. Labor Gets Organized D. Another Path: The American Federation of Labor 1. Samuel Gompers -After Haymarket, some Knights of Labor workers joined together to form American Federation of Labor (AFL); Gompers (Dutch- Jewish cigar maker) led until 1924; demanded that workers earn greater share of corporate profit. 2. Pure-and-simple unionism -Gompers hammered out a doctrine that he called pure-and-simple unionism. Pure-and- simple unionists distrusted politics and advocated collective bargaining.